Our Universe expands
and contracts
like tides on a beach
while we hunger,
sense, sleep, search;
Exchanging Symbols
on a hunk of blue
shining bright through the cosmos
from water, air and sun
but named Earth
for the dirt
we cling to...
while waves wash worlds.

28 Dec 2009

~ With all due respect to the Ottoman Empire, Lieberman is Nazi for Free Man

"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war," Lieberman said, during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday". "That's the danger we face."

"I know the president made a promise he'd close Guantanamo because of what it represented in world opinion," Lieberman said. "But today it's a first-class facility. It's way above what's required by the Geneva Convention or our constitution. It would be a mistake to send these 90 people back to Yemen because, based on the past of what's happened when we've released people from Guantanamo, a certain number have gone back into the fight against us. Yemen now becomes one of the centers of that fight."

"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."

A Letter To President Obama: Black Mesa Trust

I write to inform you of a tragedy and national disgrace occurring on the Hopi and Navajo Indian Reservations in Northern Arizona.

This month, on Hopiland, we are observing the month of Kyamuya, the time of rest, reflection and renewal, the time for staying in our homes and for telling the old stories, for sharing ancient teachings and wisdom with the youth who gather round us. They look to us with eager eyes and listen with open hearts and minds. They know they are gathering the truest wealth for living a good life, for living in our Hopi Way. They gather ancient teachings for the time when they will be called to do what I am now fulfilling: the responsibility to carry forward that our ancestors have given to us. Since time immemorial, it has been so, but, this year, more than most, correction and renewal seems especially critical.

I do not tell these children what now burdens my heart, and which I am petitioning you to address. Bodies of those who told the stories and shared the wisdom before me do not rest easy. As I write these words, bulldozers and gigantic shovels are ripping through ancient graves and dislodging my ancestors from their sacred rest in Mother Earth. As I write these words, Peabody Energy Company, with the approval of your Department of the Interior, is strip mining the history and the sacred from the ancestral lands of the Hopi people. The burial grounds and cultural sites that are our living museums and cathedrals and academy of our Hopi Way are being dynamited from under our feet.

Since 1970, strip mining started on Black Mesa, the heart of Hopi land. It is expected to continue for 16 more years. In the process of strip mining for coal, untold numbers of our ancestral villages, burial sites, rock art, and religious shrines have been and are being systematically destroyed by Peabody Western Coal Co., a subsidiary of Peabody Energy. To send the coal to Los Angeles they tap into our wells and aquifers using a million gallons of pure drinking water every day to send coal slurry through pipelines. Hopi wells have dropped in some places by 80 feet, making our traditional subsistence farming impossible.

It is not easy to explain to our children about the tragedy, about the obliteration of all traces of their ancestors. It is painful and confusing to have to explain to them that their government does not hold what is sacred to them of any importance.

This is occurring on your watch and on mine. It is the shame of our generation. It is the shame of our contracts with Peabody Energy and the shame of selling our birthright. It is the shame of Hopi who were coerced into signing the 35-year leases with Peabody and federal agents who do not seem to be concerned with the damage they wreak, and it is the shame of the Department of the Interior, which is charged with looking after our long-term well-being.

Things have changed with your election. The forces that are now destroying the resting places of our ancestors no longer hold absolute sway. The way to a brighter world is before us if we choose it. The time of desecrating the graves and the spewing of poisons can and must come to an end. There are new technologies and new fuels available for a healthier world. And, where there was once only disdain and dismissal, there is now growing respect for indigenous knowledge that has sustained the peoples for millennia. It is time to create historic change and you can bring it about.

Please, Mr. President, command those who answer to you; those in the Office of Surface Mining who are entrusted to perform the studies and select options regarding strip mining on Black Mesa. Instruct them that your administration is to be guided by a wiser and wider agenda. Inform them that a new spirit of mutual respect and concern is to be the rule when dealing with Native people and that OSM and others must re-evaluate their decisions regarding Black Mesa and other indigenous lands on the basis of mutual respect and sovereignty. Instruct them to take their trust responsibility to indigenous peoples seriously, and demand they give full consideration to cultural issues (along with those of air and water, etc.) as they move forward in their findings and decisions.

And, please, Mr. President, do not let the process be blind and deaf to the culture and ancient Way of the people whose lives and future are at stake. Do not let OSM dismiss the need to preserve the land sites in which Hopi history and teaching is encoded. Do not let federal officers under your control disgrace the bones and burial places of my ancestors.

You and your Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, have the historic opportunity to bring environmental justice to the Hopi people and all indigenous people whose lands are being desecrated by mining and logging industries.

i just thought of something that could make the COMCAST NATION alot of money...

but it should be a free service,

just like all communications globally

and food

and medicine.

Security Enabled Telephone Numbers

That meaning...

You can choose the option of requiring a passcode to call or leave a message on a phone number.

All phone calls and messages made without proper security codes are routed to a separate messaging system, accessible whenever the user chooses. Also, the system can be enabled or disabled at will. Also, the user can place any phone numbers they wish on a direct access ability.

Omi o l'ota oIf you fight am, unless you wan dieI say water no get enemyIf you fight am, unless you wan dieOmi o l'ota oI dey talk of Black man powerI dey talk of Black power, I sayI say water no get enemyIf you fight am, unless you wan dieI say water no get enemyI say water no get enemyOmi o l'ota oOmi o l'ota o

(Editors note: For historical purposes, permit me to point out that this album was released after G.H.W. had served his first year as Vice President... had served his first year in the public's eye... after a lifetime of secret work, running and controlling the C.I.A.)

25 Dec 2009

No sign of British fort at casino-site dig

By Jennifer Lin

Inquirer Staff Writer

Archaeologists working at the SugarHouse casino site between Fishtown and Northern Liberties have concluded their field work without finding any trace of a Revolutionary-era British fort, a casino spokeswoman said yesterday.

But the abundance of Native American relics unearthed during the dig, some dating back 3,000 years, has drawn the interest of a New Jersey band of the Leni-Lenape Indians.

Casino spokeswoman Leigh Whitaker said archaeologists from A.D. Marble & Co. of Conshohocken found "thousands of artifacts," ranging from Indian artifacts to fragments of pottery.

"The field work is complete," Whitaker said. "The next step is for our archaeologists to catalog all the items that they did find."

The Sand Hill Band of the Lenape has made an official request to Gov. Rendell to view the artifacts.

"We thought what they would mostly find would be colonial things," said Chester Shadow Walker Robinson, a Cherokee chief from New Jersey. "We know there was a Lenape burial ground in that area." He said that if there were any human remains, "we'd like to reclaim them for proper burials."

Laura Zucker, a spokeswoman for the Sand Hill band, said the descendants of the Lenape also have asked the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission if they could inspect the items. Under an agreement with SugarHouse, the commission will eventually take possession of the relics.

"We want to see if there are any ancestral relics or items of antiquity, and sit down to discuss what will become of them," Zucker said.

Whitaker said many of the Native American items were stone fragments from tool-building. Many were found near an ancient hearth on the 22-acre site, between Northern Liberties and Fishtown on Delaware Avenue.

Historians say ancient trails that were heavily used by tribes - which became Frankford and Germantown Avenues - ended near the waterfront. Before the arrival of European settlers, tribes would encamp on the Delaware to fish and hunt, returning to inland settlements in the winter, said Ken Milano, a Kensington historian.

The absence of any evidence of the British redoubt from 1777 has disappointed local historians, who pressured SugarHouse to look for it. SugarHouse released an early archaeological report in 2007 that made no mention of the fort. Neighborhood experts produced 18th-century maps pinpointing the fort to a location under what became Penn Street.

Whitaker said archaeologists looked for evidence of the small fort on Dec. 3 and 4. She said archaeologists found that the area had been "highly disturbed," perhaps when utility lines were installed decades ago.

William Penn was greatly interested in the Indians and even before coming to America, he had established a policy of making honest agreements of peace and consent with the Indians. King Charles II had made Penn the absolute owner of the entire province, but Penn did not agree with the king that "the savages" had no more right to the land than did squirrels and rabbits.

In 1862 Penn arrived in America and quickly made it his business to get to know the Indians well. He even learned to speak the Lenape language and liked the melody of its words. The Indians called him Miquon, the word for quill in their language or Brother Onas, using the Iroquois word. Penn entered into cordial negotiations with more than twenty sachems because no single leader could speak for the Lenape people and that is how Penn got to know Tamanend.

TAMANEND AT PERKASIE, MAY 1863

In May 1863 Penn mounted his white horse and rode north to an Indian village called Perkasie, the present site of Silverdale in Hilltown Township, Bucks County. There Tamanend and his son, Yaqueekhon, received Penn with great hospitality at a feast of venison, roasted acorns, and boiled hominy. A short vigorous man of 39, Penn joined the young men in leaping and dancing to Indian singing and the beating of drums.

Penn began by winning the trust of the Indians for his purpose of establishing a league of peace and amity. Then he laid the groundwork for buying tracts of land. He wanted to make sure that all Indian claims to land were settled before he would take the next steps of surveying parcels of land and selling them to European immigrants. And Penn reserved to himself exclusive rights; no settler was permitted to buy land from the Indians as they did across the river in New Jersey.

Penn's ideas of land as property for exclusive and personal use and the Indian concepts of the land as our mother were worlds apart. Furthermore Tamanend's people knew nothing about the English legal system of written deeds of sale and legal title to permanent land ownership.

For Europeans personal ownership of land was an intense and lifelong concern. The possibility of owning a big tract of of land was the magic of America. Buying land was the way for a European to gain personal liberty, to accumulate wealth and status, and to insure security in old age.

The Lenape Indians, however, already had liberty and security in their communal society where individual wealth was of little importance. To sell land was as incomprehensible to Tamanend as it would be to sell a bushel of tomorrow's sunshine.http://nativenewsonline.org/history/hist0623.html

“Perhaps more than anyone else, the Native American community faces huge challenges that have been ignored by Washington for too long. It is time to empower Native Americans in the development of the national policy agenda.”President Obama

“We’ve got to make sure we are not just having a BIA that is dealing with the various Native American tribes; we’ve got to have the President of the United States meeting on a regular basis with the Native American leadership and ensuring relationships of dignity and respect.”President Obama, Elko, NV, January 18, 2008

24 Dec 2009

No one is perfect, and you cannot judge a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

This man has built his empire on exploring his imperfections and judging everything in the name of humor.

It is a sad commentary on the State of the Union that the most exciting, popular and revolutionary voice begins and ends his humor perspectives on the Middle East by occasionally pronouncing "Kiss my ass, Iran" in Yiddish.

23 Dec 2009

The same year i was born, these good people were assaulted by the U.S. Government and the corporations that control it.

The assault continues to this day.

The good people continue to resist, continue to struggle, continue to survive and grow.

The people, united, will never be defeated.

To paraphrase nationalistic corporate genocide : For thousands of years the Hopi and Dine' have lived side by side peacefully. (As peacefully as we humans are emotionally capable of) U.S. corporate interests seek to divide them (all of us) so their (our) mineral resources can be exploited for profit. The U.S. Government validates forced removal by imposing irrelevant, unrealistic and invasive social regulations. The same is true for Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and the global wars on terrorism and drugs. War is hell, and all wars are the same war.

1. Declare an immediate global ceasefire of all U.S. private and Federal forces. From this day forward only killing in self-defense will be legal.

2. Declare 2010 as a U.S. Federal government sanctioned year of Recovery. This will involve a publicly developed, independent, non-corporate dialogue about appropriate social actions needed to rebuild the U.S.A. from it's current State of Emergency.

3. Decriminalize possession of all naturally occurring plants and fungi.

6. Abolish the welfare system, using the money saved to disperse free health care and create community centers including free beds on a monthly basis, showers and shitters, internet access, exercise equipment, community gardens, ping pong, billiards and an auditorium. All free. With one free meal served daily at sunset.

7. Immediately shut down all corporate operations on indigenous lands, National and State parks and forests as well as our oceans. Redesign our land policy towards conservation and growth.

8. Publicly invite G.H.W. Bush to make a public confession of his hidden hand in U.S. culture and politics, starting with the murder of J.F.K. and currently concluding with the collapse of global finance and multiple wars.

9. Create a Global Peace Proposition, inviting the military leaders of all countries and terrorist organizations into a public dialogue towards ending occupation by force and acts of terrorism.

10. Remind everyone that you stand at the center of a Bush shitstorm so horrendous and apocalyptic that the skies have been weeping for the past year.

18 Dec 2009

“Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP): the observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable but they take on the values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so.” (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John Barrow and Frank Tipler, p. 16)

While dominant European, corporate, colonial, white collar First World lies continue to ravage Earth and all life on it,

leaders who love life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness continue to defend the one true and natural world that all people call home.

Evo Morales ~ "In the past century our black and indigenous ancestors were treated as slaves, and their rights were not recognized. In a similar way, now our Mother Earth is being treated as a lifeless object, as if she had no rights. We have to abolish the slavery of Mother Earth. It is unacceptable for her to be the slave of capitalist countries. If we don't end this, we can forget about life."

Fidel Castro ~ "I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition. "

Fidel Castro ~ "If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism."

Stanley Kubrick: The God concept is at the heart of this film. It’s unavoidable that it would be, once you believe that the universe is seething with advanced forms of intelligent life. Just think about it for a moment. There are a hundred billion stars in the galaxy and a hundred billion galaxies in the visible universe. Each star is a sun, like our own, probably with planets around them. The evolution of life, it is widely believed, comes as an inevitable consequence of a certain amount of time on a planet in a stable orbit which is not too hot or too cold. First comes chemical evolution — chance rearrangements of basic matter, then biological evolution.

Think of the kind of life that may have evolved on those planets over the millennia, and think, too, what relatively giant technological strides man has made on earth in the six thousand years of his recorded civilization — a period that is less than a single grain of sand in the cosmic hourglass. At a time when man’s distant evolutionary ancestors were just crawling out of the primordial ooze, there must have been civilizations in the universe sending out their starships to explore the farthest reaches of the cosmos and conquering all the secrets of nature. Such cosmic intelligences, growing in knowledge over the aeons, would be as far removed from man as we are from the ants. They could be in instantaneous telepathic communication throughout the universe; they might have achieved total mastery over matter so that they can telekinetically transport themselves instantly across billions of light years of space; in their ultimate form they might shed the corporeal shell entirely and exist as a disembodied immortal consciousness throughout the universe.

Once you begin discussing such possibilities, you realize that the religious implications are inevitable, because all the essential attributes of such extraterrestrial intelligences are the attributes we give to God. What we’re really dealing with here is, in fact, a scientific definition of God. And if these beings of pure intelligence ever did intervene in the affairs of man, so far removed would their powers be from our own understanding. How would a sentient ant view the foot that crushes his anthill — as the action of another being on a higher evolutionary scale than itself? Or as the divinely terrible intercession of God?